Password

Monday promised to be a hot day with only a little breeze. My set up for reading at the Antiques & Art Faire was quick and easy. I had remembered to bring my new patchwork quilt table cloth made by my friend Rosie, my box of tissues, even my sunscreen. Instead of dressing in antique costume, I had chosen one of my favorite tie-dye t-shirt dresses, something simple, cool and colorful for the day.

My husband disappeared in the crowd on a mission of breakfast mercy and returned with Peets coffee, a donut, a bag of ice, two bottles of water and some carrots. We agreed on an end time and he left to see his cousins who live in the same town.

I looked at the roofline of the museum under whose eaves I had set my table. I judged the unrelenting sun to encroach on my comfort at about noon. I was scheduled to read until 3 pm. I had a while to adjust for comfort. I shuffled my cards, Robert Place’s 4^th edition of The Alchemical Tarot. They had seemed perfect for an outdoor antiques show when I had packed my things earlier in the morning. I spread them out into an arc and pulled a few out to show examples. I dug in my purse to get an old Carreras Dondorf Lenormand from 1926, part of my collection but also the deck I had determined to read with if Lenormand felt right. I remembered I still had a tiny crystal ball in my purse from BATS, one with an inclusion that would flash an inner rainbow in the right light at the right angle. I set it on its stand on my orange and purple patchwork. I sipped my coffee. I was ready.

It started slowly. One woman toyed with the idea, tracing the edge of the table with her eyes, at the edge of decision. She sat down casually, or tried to. There was nothing casual about it. Her reading was one of the most poignant of the year. I was riveted, understanding her question, including the unspoken one. On the surface, she asked casually, “What about work?”

It was not her question really, but some topics must be approached carefully. She wanted to give nothing away. So many clients are like that, smart people who do not want to be fools. I don’t mind. I see them do it. I understand. I read the cards. We talked about pulling in from giving so much energy away, the habit of teaching being so automatic, but the need now being to make the best use of resources. Of time. Time with family. I ached for her fears. I asked if they had suggested surgery; she would find out soon.

My table was set near the steps to the restrooms and I was very good as informal ambassador, pointing the desperate up the stairs, smiling as they returned relieved, repeating the schedule for the antique appraisal booth and the museum, taking custody of a purple-cased smartphone left in the restroom. So soon the wide-eyed owner, breathless, came to find it and was overjoyed at the reunion.

Soon, several others stopped and business picked up. The sun rose high in the sky and I hugged the wall for the last bit of shade and read for several other people. My husband surprised me with a sandwich and I hadn’t realized he was still around—excellent timing!

Just after I downed my lunch, one of the men doing appraisals came to me with another phone, black rubberized case this time.

“A man’s,” I thought, then remembered that my own work phone had some commando-black case on it so perhaps not. I waited for the frantic owner, the glad reunion. The sun drove me to the edge of the wall. I would have to move soon or burn. I started to worry about the phone and its owner. I pressed the button, just to see if it had some way to identify the owner.

No password! The phone was completely unprotected. I was shocked. In this time of identity theft, here was an expensive new phone exposed to anyone who might pick it up. I looked for the information that might provide the name of the owner. Jackpot! In the contact list was the owner’s name. Not only that, but the owner had put his wife’s numbers, other relative’s numbers and astonishingly his bank account numbers. My jaw dropped. What if someone else had gotten this? I quickly dialed his wife’s cell number, ringing but no answer. 

I asked the organizers if they knew someone by that name. Enough time had passed that I was certain he had left the antique show. Surely he should notice by now. A few minutes later I looked down and saw his wife’s name light up on his phone. Contact! I was too late but called her right back and we connected.

“Hi, this is a little awkward but your husband left his phone at the antique show and I have it.”

She laughed and we had a good chat about lost phones and sudden realizations. He was on his way back to the fair, having left his lunch mid-bite at a nearby restaurant. I asked her permission to give him a good scolding for having his cell phone so completely unprotected and she eagerly agreed.

Moments later he arrived, grinning, sheepish, towed by my friend, the show organizer. It was clear he felt exposed to women in charge of his well-being and was ready to take his punishment.

“Sit down,” I said, using The Voice.

“Oh,” he said. “A Tarot reading?” He was clearly confused.

“No, we are going to sit here and password protect your phone. And your bank account numbers are in your contact list! You’ve worked hard for your money. Why would you want to lose it to carelessness at the hands of someone who isn’t honest like I am?”

We looked at his phone features and decided it was better if his wife set the password.

“When we finish lunch,” he said with pleading eyes, “I’ll have her come to get a reading from you.”

“I’m much more interested in your promise to secure your phone. Pinky swear?”

We crooked our fingers. He brought his wife back at the end of the show and I read her cards, the last of the day.

The Sun finally won and I moved to the shade of the tall sycamore in the parking lot. Some readers think the Sun in Tarot is always a good card, shining its light in the darkest places. But that shining light can represent the unvarnished truth that’s hard to face. It can expose secrets that should be secret and leave you unprotected and burned. The choice is yours.

Best wishes.

High Summer

High summer holds the earth. 
Hearts all whole.
Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder wand'ring far
alone
Of shadows on the stars.

                               

     --James Agee, Sure On This Shining Night

It was warm today, warm, not hot. I got up early, not meaning to, but the sunlight would not let me sleep further. I had some plans for the day, a couple of readings and a rare trip shopping. Before then, however, I had to verify some software changes really worked.

It was too early for the software changes. My part of the working weekend was small and I was glad for that. As soon as they called me, I could make sure they worked, make sure the data looked good, make sure the changes didn’t break something else.

I checked up on Alice, a little close inspection just to be sure she was doing better. She is doing much better and seems better than she has in a long time. I think now that the antibiotics she took for her kitty-cat pancreatitis had an overall “sunshine” effect of clearing up just about anything that was ailing her. Further, I think she may have had some kind of low-grade infection for a while. I posted something funny on Facebook because people had been asking how she was doing, imagining that she, like some famous-for-being-famous-for-five-minutes person in too deep and too much in the public eye, woke up from anesthesia certain that she was drugged and given a Brazilian wax. Horrors by light of day!

The Sun in the Tarot is sometimes thought to be good no matter what. Even reversed, for those who read with reversals, the Sun’s positive light shines through just about everything. There’s no dark side of the Sun. Or is there?

The Sun is not welcomed by everyone. One of my classmates in high school had a skin condition that gave her an allergic hives-like reaction when exposed to the sun. That was a tough problem to manage in New Mexico, where sunlight was obscured more often by dust storms than rain storms. If the Sun came up in a reading for her, would it be good? Would it mean hide? Cover up? Set her life by the opposite of most of society and become safely nocturnal?

The Sun is good news and bad news for amateur photographers too. When the Sun is high in the sky, the breath-taking views of the Grand Canyon from the South Rim are washed out glare, dust and rocks and a reminder to stay at least your own height in distance from the edge of the cliff. White clouds sail across a light blue sky with little definition. It is hot in the summer there. There are stories of the numbers of people who go over the edge. The dry trees, some dead, some alive gnarl towards the edge of the irregular canyon, and provide one of my favorite experiences, the smell of pinon pine sap.

As the Sun falls low in the sky toward the end of the day, no longer glaring down on all it rules, the canyon’s colors come alive in reds, purples, oranges, blues and yellows with a last hurrah of the coraling curtains of clouds before it rests, and lets all others rest, for another cooling evening. Colors and creatures come out then. Do they flee the Sun, the Sun that brings life and cooks it to dust and ashes?

That evening at the Grand Canyon, the angle of light at Monterey Bay, California, the brilliant sunsets in New Mexico are all made possible by the Sun, the Sun in the right position.

The Sun can expose the truth, bring realization. It can also dazzle and blind, create mirages in the desert or a lonely stretch of blacktop road. It can warm; it can burn. A happy day can turn into a sleepless night of pain.

Is the Sun always good?

A reading like this, the 10 of Swords, The Sun, the 9 of Swords seldom makes a “sunny” message. A betrayal has come to light and is exposed, known, perhaps known to all, and the realization that all illusions are gone, dreams are over and nothing but the real world faces the person betrayed. It’s hard to call this a positive reading. The shadows on the Sun may be the darkest of all.

In a larger sense, though, while a betrayal never feels good, perhaps it may be best to know, to know for certain finally and to wake to a new day even in sorrow so that the Soul may progress on its journey. It may seem like the longest day, but we and the Sun rest and begin again tomorrow.

Happy Summer Solstice!

The Crack in the Sun or Pixie’s Children

There I was, completely enthralled by artist and author Robert M. Place discussing the life and influences of Pamela Colman Smith a/k/a Pixie, the artist who drew and painted the images for the deck most people think of when they think of Tarot. I am sometimes a co-host with Donnaleigh de LaRose on her inspiring, meaty, funny and informative tarot show on Blog Talk Radio called Beyond Worlds.

Just my own little plug for Donnaleigh and her efforts: Beyond Worlds is one of the best sources of free information on tarot there is. So, if you have internet access but you are on a terrible budget, don’t have money to travel for conferences or in-person classes, Beyond Worlds is the perfect place to learn more about tarot from the most respected people I know. Where else can you get a free education from authorities on the topic? Did I mention free?

Back to this broadcast, I was so happy Donnaleigh had tagged me to be a guest host for this particular show. Bob’s book The Tarot, History, Symbolism, and Divination is one of my favorites. And he creates beautiful images in his own tarot decks that have at once a simplicity of line and a complexity of imagery. At one Reader’s Studio, Bob taught a segment on his own tarot spread reading the Chakras that was more diagnostic than a CT-Scan. Plus, at the last Reader’s Studio I snagged a couple of his sterling silver pins. Bob’s kind of an encyclopedia in himself too so just listening to him takes you places you never expected to go.

So the cool thing about this episode, and all the other episodes of Beyond Worlds, is that Donnaleigh posts the recorded session to make it available for people who were unable to attend the show live. You can listen to Bob’s description of Pixie’s early influences, including placing her not only in the right timeline but also among the people she knew.

We started laughing about Pixie being like Forrest Gump, showing up with so many famous names. Ellen Terry, the most famous actress of her time, was like a mother to her after her own mother died. William Butler Yeats introduced Pixie to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in London, a group “dedicated to the goal of uniting with the divine, achieving henosis, and perfecting oneself” according to the Wikipedia listing. She was close to Bram “Uncle Brammie” Stoker in her theatre experience and illustrated his 1911 book The Lair of the White Worm.

Pixie was an artist whose family was rich and as it turns out not painfully dull. Her mother was an actress. Pixie lived in New York, England and Jamaica in her early years due to her father’s business enterprise. Her mom died when Pixie was young, but not too young to remember. Her father apparently was “in her court” and assisted her with her career.

I decided to look for little Pixie in the Tarot, her Tarot, her children, herself as child. I was surprised, since she had been a kindergarten teacher and had illustrated at least one children’s book, that so few of her cards show children. I looked specifically for children, not teenagers or young adults and found Death, The Sun, Judgement, the 6 of Cups, the 10 of Cups, the 6 of Swords and the 10 of Pentacles.

My sense was that she would say the Tarot is an adult thing. The search for mystical knowledge in the world of symbols for her seems less like Arthur Edward Waite’s prescriptive knowledge of their use and meaning and much more like the discovery of the eternal while listening to Debussy. Our Pixie approached the Tarot from a “right-brained” point of view and I expect she felt the images came to her, in their detail, rather than being drafted, directed and choreographed. And in that adult thing that was Tarot, the child could only be a child with a child’s vision, faith, point of view.

In Death, the dark-haired innocent is wreathed with flowers and is on her knees, staring Death full on as he rides through the landscape on his pale horse with his back armor. The little one reaches back for her mother’s hand, but her mother is unable to look or respond. The child views Death as a small person, someone who could not stop the horse or its rider. The events of change are so much bigger than a child.

In The Sun, the child rides the white horse, both bare-backed, without armor, without protection or distance from each other. I thought of Pixie’s childhood in Jamaica, in the warmth of the overgrown garden, free, yet protected by walls built by someone else, triumphant, delighted in the day. For what else do we have but today?

The children in Judgement look up at the trumpeting angel. Where their parents strike a pose to be uplifted by inner enlightenment or reach out to feel the music, the children raise their arms as much to greet the angel as to embrace it and even to conduct the music. Is it easier to arise from the past with less baggage? It is so much easier to fly when you still believe you can.

Still safe within the walls of home, the children in the 6 of Cups appear to be the scene of the older child giving a cup of a flower to the younger. Is the gift incomplete? The older child seems to offer the cup bare-handed, knees bent to the younger one. Or is the older child, unable to understand the significance yet, accepting a gift, bending to smell the fragrant flower, from the younger child whose hand is gloved, never quite touching. Will the child understand, only in retrospect, the significance of the gift? Memory is like this, a picture without touching.

The children in the 10 of Cups dance together, child-happy in a landscape where the parents appear to understand and appreciate the gift of the bliss they have been given. For children, these days last forever. For an adult, they are gone too soon. Like a rainbow, were they ever there at all?

I understood too well the child in the boat in the 6 of Swords, sitting with an adult—mother?—cloaked as if in mourning or bundled against the cold. The thoughts are heavy in the boat and threaten to sink it as they make their way from rough water to a far-away land. Someone else, someone strong steers the boat. Someone else is in charge. My family left our home for a place we had only heard of. It was an adventure. It was a mourning. It was refuge.

Finally, the 10 of Pentacles’ child peeks out from around her happy and confident mother’s skirt to touch the dog. The dog seeks the touch, however, of the patchworked old man outside the gates of security and the known universe. Is he a beggar? A wizard cloaked in magical symbols? The parents focus on the now, but the child looks outside the gates to know what may be, drawn by the comforting touch of the warm and loving dogs who seem to know the old man. Is this the real thing? Or is it just fantasy? One thing is for certain, for good or ill, all this will, must change.

I think Pixie shows us that childhood is to be held precious and dear, protected and encouraged and yet is so often misunderstood. Near the XIX in many printings of the RWS deck on The Sun, there is an extra jagged line, thought by some to be a crack in the printing plate. The “flaw” is the way of things. All things must change and become themselves again.

Best wishes.

Summer Sun

It’s officially summer and it has been too darned hot in the San Francisco area. Now I know all you sun worshippers have been waiting impatiently for the warm weather but some of us delicate flowers prefer the coolth to the warmth or if you ask me, the hotth. (It’s my blog and I can make up words if I want to, right?)

What better card in the Tarot deck to show us summer in all its glory than The Sun? Who wouldn’t want to feel like a happy toddler with a pony in a flower garden and play all day? Me, that’s who. OK, happy, check. Toddler, check. Pony, as long as it doesn’t stand on my feet, check. Flower garden, check. Ah, but check the wardrobe on our happy sweetums. That’s going to burn for sure.

I know about sunburn. I grew up half convinced that it was me in that Coppertone ad and not Jodie Foster. I had a black dog. I went to the beach. I scorched. Add sand in your britches and scream all night. Nothing like trying to peel out of a swimsuit that feels like wet sandpaper over boils and blisters at the end of a perfect day!

And yet the beach remains my favorite place, rain or shine, summer or winter. I love the smell, the sound, the aquatic life, the differences between soft sand and hard sand, the way you sink into hard sand with each little wave. I love seashells and fish. I love shorebirds running up and down the tides, playing tag with the waves, digging for critters. I love watching a storm cross the Gulf of Mexico and cloud-to-cloud lightning, all before it hits the beach. I love the phosphorescent sparkle at night, the growing hum in the morning, the blazing glare of noon, the cooling breeze of evening. I love losing track of time, except by the tides and the sun. But I hate sunburn.

Of course, you don’t really need to be at the beach for sunburn. One humdinger of a sunburn peeled not once but twice. I was babysitting two semi-angelic little boys, which is pretty good if you think about it, out on their deck under the trees on a breezy afternoon, reading a good book and watching the little darlings romp in the back yard. Like so many sunburns, I didn’t realize I was having an “off-color” experience until the day was over. Then I had the luxury of regretting my folly for days.

My first California sunburn came after a lovely hike on Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County to enjoy outdoor theatre at the Mountain Play. The cool breeze and dappled sunlight through the trees were so inviting. Liar, liar, pants on fire! I don’t remember the play at all. I remember later that night, rolling over in bed at 2 AM, gently, ever so gently, hoping my blistering arm would not fall off in the process of rubbing against high-count cotton sheets that were suddenly as rough as a country road.

“Stop, kitty,” I whined weakly, pitifully. The kitty must be having a heck of a good scratch to make the bed move that vigorously. Any movement at all was agony and I vowed never to leave the house again, knowing I would break my vows. The kitty had no mercy for me. The bed moved more violently.

Ka-boom! A noise like a semi-tractor-trailer hitting the house sent the bed and all occupants an inch off the floor. I sat up.

“What’s happening?” I bellowed in my best horror queen voice which must have echoed off the hills north of Sonoma where I lived. It was an earthquake, a shallow one, my very first in California. Its epicenter was reported the next day as being “in a remote area in the Napa Valley.”

“Remote, heck!” I said in disgust, still nursing my burns which surely must be third degree especially after having been ground down by the sheets. “It was under my house!” It took me an entire week to find the two things that tipped over.

Like a lot of people I grew up with, I still have a sneaking suspicion that a little sun exposure gives your skin a healthy glow. I love those sunshiny freckles across their cute little noses. I had only a few freckles but I was sort of hoping they would merge and become a tan someday. My swords-y logical self knows better, knows the dangers of sun exposure in a family with Irish roots. But there are still some fond memories of trying to get an all-over tan in New Mexico one summer without much success due to probably appropriate modesty. And one summer I spent so much time out on Crab Orchard Lake in my friend’s boat in my favorite chocolate brown bikini (this was a long time ago, remember) that my long hair bleached palest blonde, my tan actually lasted a month into the fall semester at college and I developed a new sign of the sun’s unfriendly effects: Skunk hair.

If you’ve never had skunk hair, consider yourself lucky. That darker, normal stripe close to my head was the final proof I needed to stay out of the sun. It wasn’t considered fashionable when I developed my skunk hair. I had put a lot of time into growing it out past my waist, trimming those split ends, giving up on any hope of a wave or a curl. I caved. I became bottle-blonde although my original color isn’t that far from the bottle. It’s just that now, after so many years, I’m not sure what color my hair is. There’s this funny pale stripe from ear to ear across the top of my head someone once called the Crown of Wisdom. OK, that's new.  I generally estimate that my “real” hair color is somewhere between “mouse” and “mold,” a sort of greenish-dust bunny color not found in interior paint palettes. I guess the sun’s bad effects saved me from a life of mouse and mold or something. And it’s given me the perfect excuse for saying silly things with the thought that I resemble that remark.

Skin cancer and overexposure to the sun isn’t funny though. I have friends who have lost family to melanoma. My own father thought he could treat his own skin cancer with athlete foot’s powder. After about ten years of that, he went to the doctor, had surgery including a fairly painful skin graft. It was something that could have been avoided with early treatment or wearing the right protection from the sun. (Note to self:  Skin cancer is not the same as athlete's foot.)

For Summer Solstice time, the Sun rules. But when you ride that pony around in the garden, bring your sunscreen and hat along. Your life is longer than a day so make your summer SPF-y.

Best wishes.

The Incompleat Workes of Beth the Jester

Oh, wow, I’m breathless! I just received my latest Beth Seilonen decks, among them, the Tarot of the Red Jester. And I also just received the originals of a deck not otherwise published, Owls in the Night. Beth lives and breathes art and tarot in Maine. I would like to say I’m one of her oldest fans, but I think there are people older than I am who love her work too. At least I hope so.

I first saw mention of her work on Aeclectic Tarot where some of her other fans were oooh-ing and ahhh-ing over her decks. I had to see what the fuss was about. And what a delight! Now, I know that there’s a time and place for those bite-you-in-the-neck-scream-and-swoon decks; I have those too, trust me. Even the relentlessly optimistic have a dark side. But Beth’s work fills a gap in the whimsy department like no other tarot artist. So I’ve become one of her frequent patrons of the arts.

Besides those two new arrivals, my collection of Beth’s work is, to my mind, small: Another Way, Arcana Cats, Fishy Tarot (true, I’m a fish-nut but I love these fish), Foxy Arcana, Funky Lighthouse, the incomparable Isabel Snail, the Pink Arcana, Purple Penguin, Home Sweet Home, Split View, Tree Women, Watchers, Whimsy Tarot, Witches II and Jester’s Tarot (not to be confused with Tarot of the Red Jester). It is by no means a complete collection! Yet to be snagged are The Maine, Sun Conure, Symbolically Simplistic, Hues, Sails, Baby of Thine, well, good grief, you guys, just go look at all this lovely stuff! http://www.catseyeart.com/index.html

Beth’s decks aren’t just whimsy and color. Her trees bear messages of the harm we do to the environment, the preciousness of our earth, the delight of life and the enormity of circumstance as viewed by the individual. Take a close look at her Watchers and you’ll start looking over your shoulder. Her Tree Women have deep roots. Even bouncy little Nestor the Jester in the Pink Arcana shows the emotion and ambiguity of the tarot much deeper than his pink rolly-polliness may at first glance convey. The Jester makes us laugh, but stay a moment because he (or is that she?) makes us think too. The Jester plucks the conscience of the king as Shakespeare might suggest. Even slow-moving, unsuspecting, gentle and delicate Isabel Snail can ooze up to rest on the wrong golf ball of life with dire consequences. As in that funny-but-true song, “Sometimes you’re the windshield. Sometimes you’re the bug.”

Beth’s limited edition decks are easy to read with but personally, I don’t usually want to take the risk of ruining them with shuffling and use. I do like to get them out to admire and meditate. Isabel Snail’s Tower feels just like October 2002 for me. I can still feel that *whoosh* of the wind I caught just before life hit me right square in the snail shell. The Foxy Arcana “Yearn” shows we all have dreams, the fox and the chickens: If you have sweet little dreams, you sleep; if you have obsessive dreams, you’re up all night.

Just this past weekend, though, I broke my own rule about reading with Beth’s cards. Owls in the Night is so tiny (most of Beth’s decks are “normal” playing card size, but the Owls deck is a bit smaller) that it easily slips into my purse along with what seems to be several hundred pounds of other stuff in there (the Hubs swears this is where the missing Mr Hoffa may be…gotta love those vintage Dooney & Burkes for durability). I read for a private party, some delightful ladies, one of whom had been the successful bidder on my silent auction offering at the Benicia Vallejo Humane Society’s Barkitecture fundraiser. Our hostess plied me with the always-welcome endless glass of water and a glazed donut, plus treated me to a break between readings with a walk in her backyard full of roses and a glorious view of the Carquinez Straits. As a special treat, each sitter got to pick an owl’s card as their closing message for the day. It ended what might have been a “heavy” session on a light note.

Each of Beth’s decks has come with its own hand-decorated box and usually a little drawstring pouch. They are generally laminated, numbered, signed and easy to hold. Beth’s note cards are nearly as much fun as her decks. And, with Beth’s permission, I wanted to share some examples here with you.

The best news of all is that Beth appears to be nowhere near the end of her creativity with tarot. Her Red Jester comes in two alternatives, true to her tailored to the customer’s wish, in its limited edition. For those who want only to be guided by the image, there is the choice of having the card interpretations printed on additional cards supplied with the deck. For those collectors who want to preserve both her images and words together on each card, there is the choice to have the Red Jester “with interpretation.” In addition, there’s a silk cloth, 11” x 11” in choice of 4 colors. I picked “with” and red, being subtle in my collecting.

I’m quite pleased to note that we have available to us here the (happily) Incompleat Workes of Beth the Jester, a whimsical Maine artist and mom, with wonderful new visions of the funny, scary, angry, sad, joyful and loving world of tarot. Encore! Encore! May your inks and watercolors never run dry!

You can find Beth’s decks through this website: http://www.catseyeart.com/index.html, on Etsy, on eBay and if you’re really nice, she’ll accept your friend invitation on Facebook. Please write to her to encourage her to come to this year’s BATS (Bay Area Tarot Symposium) too!

**

Psst! Registration for BATS just opened and they accept PayPal. The dates are August 28-29, 2010 in San Francisco. It’s loads of fun for tarot enthusiasts and always features fabulously informed experts and a luscious marketplace. For more information and registration, go to http://www.dodivination.com/sf_bats



Best wishes!

Happy Son Rise

Today may be rainy, but I’m sunny on the inside. Happy Easter! I know it’s a difficult topic for some so I’ll treat it as gently as possible. For one thing, I’m not going to get into a discussion of what’s the “true religion” v. well, I guess, everything else. It’s not my nature to argue with people about religion. It’s too, too personal. I value my relationships with people who believe things that are different from my beliefs. I respect their point of view. I honor their beliefs. I wouldn’t want to offend them and I wouldn’t want to be offended by them. But I don’t think it’s too much to talk about beliefs in general, even though it may stretch into difficult territory.

I believe in love. I know that’s corny, but honestly, that’s the essence of it. And because I believe in love, I can’t believe in a lot of things that are done in the name of religion, like excluding or harming people because of, well, anything, really. The Golden Rule is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But just in case you get a kick out of people insulting you or hitting you, if you prefer to be harmed or hated or worse, I don’t think the Golden Rule gives you license to treat other people that way. So one of the extensions of my belief in love is that I don’t think I have all the answers, I don’t think I’m right and others are wrong, and I don’t think I have the right to judge other people for their beliefs. I realize that by recognizing those traits in others and getting outraged over them is actually judging. And to me this is the conundrum of daily living.

I happen to express my beliefs in a fairly traditional Christian way but by no means do I believe Christians=good, Others=not. For whatever reason, my grade school experience at St. James in Orlando was such a positive one, that it converted me from “undecided” to Catholic. It worked for me. I didn’t have any bad experience with priests or nuns.

Oh, sure, we thought Sister Claire was scary, but that was because she was hard of hearing and yelled at everyone. Sister Goretti and Sister Ethelberga were formidable in their own way, but those ways were ways to be aspired to. Sister Goretti was one of the best short stops I ever met, even though she had to hike her habit up to round the bases after she’d hit an almost-homerun. Sister Ethelberga was the epitome of grace under pressure. I didn’t know any “knuckle-rapping” nuns.

My favorite nun in grade school was Sister Lawrence. She had a plain German face with straight but unlovely teeth and blue-blue eyes aided by steel-rimmed glasses. She was a nun after my own heart, having constantly bucked up against the “obey” portion of her vows. She had come in under difficult circumstances. Halfway through my second grade year, Sister Kateri left. She was young, beautiful, and bubbly without being egotistical. Sister Kateri was loved by the children and parents alike. Sister Lawrence came in to finish up the year. She was not as pretty, not as superficially precious or as outgoing. She was smart. She had to pick up the pieces. She had trouble with “obey.” She was my nun-soul-mate. I followed her around like a dog. I knew what it was like to be an outsider trying to fit in. I was the only non-Catholic in my grade until another kid joined our class a couple of years later. I understood problems with “obey” and “pray for your mouth.” These were my problems too.

The priests there at St. James were a little distant, happy to leave the education of the parish’s children to the Sisters of St. Joseph. But when they made an appearance, we were all excited. It was rumored that the Monsignor smoked and drank. This did not impress me much. My mother smoked. My parents had a drink every once in a while. Now, if they had told me that the Monsignor had scream-fights with people, I would have been terrified. But when I saw him, he always appeared to be just a little more uncomfortable being there than I was, but seemed pleasant enough and always wished us well. He had lovely dark red hair. Another priest in the parish came into my 3rd grade class and taught us rudimentary Spanish. I thought that was very cool, other languages ranking right up there with secret codes for me. A third priest visited on occasion and the thing that most impressed me was that he looked like Ilya Kuriakan (actor David McCallum) from the Man from U.N.C.L.E. only with dark hair. I contemplated the delicate issue of having a crush on a priest, even in grade school. But I decided it was harmless and so was Father Troy.

I devoured stories of the saints, reading far beyond the whole Dick and Jane series. I cleared out my bookcase and created a shrine to the Virgin Mary, kneeling on the cold terrazzo floors of our centrally air conditioned house to pray and contemplate the lives of St. Bernadette and St. Joan of Arc.

I came to my Catholicism with no particular love of any other church. The First Methodist Church in Orlando was large, devoid of any interesting or inspiring artwork, but they did have a superior-tasting Sunday School paste. People always wonder what children get out of Sunday school experiences. My greatest Methodist moments besides the Sunday School Paste were my desperation to get out of a particularly beautiful but very scratchy raw silk dress which I refused to wear thereafter and getting my eyebrow split open on the fire door on the way out of Vacation Bible School. The Bible School lady was in hysterics over the blood streaming down my face which must have looked like a teen horror flick. I remember going to the hospital in downtown Orlando and waiting with my mother to be seen, then thinking that I could have waited since it was only a cut but the old man in the waiting room who was having trouble breathing really needed a doctor. I was stitched up by a Dr. Silver who was drop-dead gorgeous to my 6-year-old eyes. I now think it refreshingly wonderful to have gotten a 6-year-old’s crush on a cute, young Jewish intern after being laid open by the fire door at the Methodist Church. I have only fond memories of the scar above my eye. All of this had its inspiration but very little of it on a spiritual plane.

And yet I was a very spiritual child, well before my Catholic school or Methodist fire door days. One of my most profound spiritual moments was while I was still small, 5 or 6, sitting on a dock on a lake in rural Florida. It wasn’t quite Florida-hot, just a nice cool day. My Dad, my brother, and the Steinmetz brothers were out in the boat on the lake. The women were in the pine-paneled house up the long yard from the dock. It was nature-quiet. Lucky, the black and white springer spaniel, was sleeping near me as I dangled my legs over the water at the end of the dock, making wet doggy breathing noises, content in his easy assignment of keeping me company. There were birds chirping, just a few frogs croaking, the occasional bubble rising from the lake bed, the occasional swish of a turtle rising for breath or a fish chasing smaller fish. The sky was bright “Microsoft” blue with white fluffy clouds. Strung between the energies of my father beyond my sight on the lake and my mother equally hidden in the house, I was suspended as if in a hammock of their energy, safe and guarded by Lucky.

Looking at the clouds I sensed? saw? what I later would describe as a blue slide like a rainbow in shape stretching from northwest to southeast across the lake. It spanned the sky, a little darker blue than the sky, with its “sides” like a slide has an even slightly darker blue. I realized there were people on the slide, but they were shimmers of people who traveled on this bow, gliding as if they were on a great conveyer belt. I waved to them. They waved back. They were friendly even though they had places to go. I knew I could travel on that big bridge if I wanted to but was content to sit on the dock with my feet over the water and my hand on the dog. I knew I was connected.

And then, people, the ones I knew from the boat and the house, arrived and the “blue slide” was gone. I was left with a sense of contentment and happiness, no particular message other than love. So I believe in love.

My experience in Catholic school added to rather than replaced this profound spiritual experience. Saints, souls, life, love, beauty, kindness, and Big Blue Slides all became part of the sunshine of my life. I was in touch with the spiritual world in a way that changed my life for the better.

Recently I had an experience common to many who study tarot. In spite of mutual kindness and good intent, a niece and her family told me they could not bear to hear from me anymore because of their Christian beliefs and my work with tarot. I see no conflict between Christianity and tarot. Many, many images in traditional tarot are of Christian origin, so much so that my Pagan friends wish for decks that are as full of their own imagery instead. I can find Bible passages about different gifts as easily as they can find them about negative messages about what I do. The argument is moot. It does not matter. While this means sorrow for me, I accept that this is the path they must take in their lives and the one I must take in mine. And I still love them, just a little farther away than I did before. Because I believe in love and different gifts, just as sure as the sun rises.

Best wishes.